Some things are better said than done and I quickly came to learn that at Visual Thinking 160. As I mention previously in some of my other post, I thought this class was going to be easy, Unfortunately, I was highly mistaken some of the things we did in this class took a lot of time and delicacy. Everything we did had a process that came in veriest steps. SO much of my time in this course I became frustrated. Looking back at it now am thankful that I took this class because I was able to learn a step of new skills and got to learn a little but more about myself..

I was a able to work with different materials for each project and learn to use a knife to cut paper which was faster and better than using a pair of scissors. In the project that I did with my box I learn to use a scanner to make things at different size. When I was working at the autonomy project I learn to use a software name Pixie to edit the photographs I have taken to look exactly the way I wanted the words to be representative. The hardest project I did was the very last one because of the face that it was a self portrait and I was not allow to make the outline for any part of my face. In this project I learn to work with chock and how to erase the different lighting shades that my face .

Also, I learn that when it comes to art I need to be patient and just keep working on it. At the same time I learn that every piece of art work is not completely finish , there is always something that can be done to it. Another thing I learn is that I need to stop asking weather my art is right or not because I am the artist and because I am the artist only I would know when my art work is done or right, Overall, I really enjoyed this class I was frusted at times with my own work but very happy with the results of my finish pieces and thankful for the set of skills I learn,

In the past three weeks I have been working on my self portrait and I must say as the last project of the year it was very difficult to complete. The materials that I used for these process was a large and small piece of white cotton paper, black chock, tissue, an eraser, a mirror and a lamp. The first step of the process was to cover the entire large white cotton paper with black chock. Applying the white onto the paper directly was not an option. There was a small process that I did for this step. First, I aggressively draw lines with onto the small white cotton paper to get the dust from the chock. Using tissue paper I gently rub on the chock dust on to the large white paper cotton on to it until it turned black.

Once my entire large paper was black, the second step was to use my eraser to draw my self. But even before I could do not I need to set up my station but setting a mirror in a position where I can look at my face and draw at the same time. Also, I needed to set up the lamp in a way that the light hits my face. This was a big challenge for me because unlike any other drawing I have done before I could not start my drawing by doing the outline of my face. I started my portrait by doing my nose first as it was suggested by my Professor. She taught me that the tip of my nose in where the light shines the brightest. The nose was the easy part for me nut after after the nose everything else was more difficult. I did not know where to start, but I ended up drawing my lips. It took me forever to draw my lips because I needed to mentally tell my self that my lips where not a perfect curvy line. The same thing came down when I was drawing my eyes.

Mentally my brain was telling be to draw one thing while my eyes where looking at something different and more complicated. It took me forever to finish my portrait. I spend so many hours working on it and each time I had to stop and then come back to it because my brain could not think of what else to do. After so many hours of work and effort invested I was done but portrait still looked nothing like me. A few days pasted before we had the critique and on the day of the critique peers mention how I had an intense looked on my portrait and that it really defines me because they believe I have an intense looked on my face. This made me laugh because I never consider my self one of those people with an intense looked on their face.At the end my Professor said that maybe after doing about ten more of my portraits it would finally looked exactly like me. Overall this portrait has been the most challenging yet proudest portraits I have done due to the mental challenges I faced and the great amount of time I spend working on getting it done.

A couple weeks ago I attended a lecture by Shelia Pree Bright here on campus. Shelia Pree Bright is a very famous photographer here in Atlanta, building the reputation as a Cultural Anthropologist. In her lecture she mention that she really like looking at culture and always asking why? and finding the positive instead of the negative. Beside leaning about who she is and what she does, learn a lot about the way beauty is seen in america, what people think of the American flag, and a bit about the black culture here in America. Shelia’s series are very culturally and socially driven.

Her work shows us how black males where portrait back in her day as aggressive man holding guns, heavily involve in crime, and hip-hop culture. In her series Plastic Bodies, she demonstrated how women are becoming more plastic because of the changes they make to their natural beauty. She said that as s result the plastic is becoming more human and the human more plastic. Also, she talked about her series Our America, In which people she took pictures of people from all over the country posing with the flag in a way that represents what America means to them. It was interesting seeing how each person had their know view on America and how there own experiences in America were represented in there posing.

Overall, I really enjoyed her lecture and leaning about her work. Her technique of always asking why things are a certain why, reminded me of my Visual Thinking class. In class, my peers and I are encourage to always explore working with different medias and see how those different medias get our massage across or/and change our understanding. The see things differently depending on thee media we use, therefore we must explore and see which media cultivates are message better.

These past two weeks I been working on a project focus on the words Irritated and Soothed, the idea is to visually interpret these two words without writing the word it self or demonstrating any other words that describe the word. I hope that made sense. The first set to my project was to take two piece of black white paper put each of the words in the center of the page and just writing any other words that come to my mind when I read the word and highlighting any words that standout to me. I found this part of the project quite easy. It did not took me long to have my page cover with words, am assuming is because of how I can easily connect to both.

Two days later in class I was provided with thumbnails, which I would use to draw things that are not symbols of significant meaning to interpret the word irritated and soothed. Similarly, to my first step of the project it was not hard for me to start drawing. At that moment in class I just let my feelings take over and my hand showed obedience to those feelings. It made me feel calm and relax just like the meaning of the word soothed. At no moment did I felt confuse or lose. I must said that this was my favorite step of the process. The next step was to take all of my thumbnails and pick my favorite three for each word and draw them on to larger thumbnails.

After picking out my three favorite drawings for my thumbnails. I receive critiques from my classmates on which out of the three drawings for each ward to use. Going with the suggestions of my classmates, I decided that for the word Irritated I would draw aggressive lines going in a vertical direction back and forth. I did this to demonstrate my frustration on paper. Since, am always mentally visualizing an ocean wave when I see the word Soothed, meaning gently calm. I decided to draw one thin curvy line traveling vertically.

Next, I decide to bring these two wards to life by representing them in an image. For irritated I took a picture on my roommate laying on the floor of our room with paper assignments and notes from my astronomy and financial accounting class . In addition I told her to grab her hair and have a facial expression that demonstrates frustration. After taking the picture, I darken to make it look black and white. The explanation for all this is because when I think of the word irritated I think of my two most irritating classes which are astronomy and financial accounting. In addition, I think of the multiple times that I have stay up late at night doing work for both classes and my roommate being on the side to me working on her on homework. I made the image dark only because I associated dark colors with negative connotations like the word irritated.

In soothed I took a picture of my friend standing outside at the Decatur Square inside the gazebo facing up out with a clam smile on her face. In this image I edited to make it look as bright as possible to give it a very live environment. I took this image outside because the meaning of the word soothed makes me think of something that is free and not indoor. The word is very meditating to me and I catch a positive connotation from it, therefore I wanted her to look up happily at the sky as if having hope that tomorrow is a better day and using bright colors to give it that vibe.

Finally, I finish my project by cutting all my images in a 5 x 5 in squares and framing them on to a black cardboard. This part was some what difficult because it involve a lot of steps and I had to be very careful on how I place things. First, need to make sure that all four images where 5 x 5. Second, I need to place them on the glue sheet and cut them again. Third, I needed to a line them to a perfect measurement. In my last step I just had to compress all of my images with heat. Overall, enjoyed this project especially making the drawings in the thumbnails. I hope to do something similar to this in the near future.

On October 26, 2014, my friend Knia and I when to the Hail and Saints Halloween Parade in Decatur, GA. The parade was coordinated by the Decatur Market and Gallery, a co-operative gallery for emerging artist. The Parade was organize around the theme of Halloween, in which there were a multiple of organizations, local business, and school groups that participated in the parade. Halloween is a traditional holiday here in the United States in which people dress-up in costumes are go trick-or-treating from house to house. The theme of Halloween defiantly showed in the parade every one was wearing costumes and people giving out candy to little kids.

I was fascinated by the participants costumes because of there level of care and how when put together it makes it a look really uniform and eye-catching. For example, I there was a group of people whom wear super hero costumes. what was very unique about their costumes is that their entire costume was form in a cubical shape. I thought that was really cool because I have never seen anything like this. What I mean is that I have seen super hero costumes just not in the form of a cubical shape. Their costumes reminded me of the box project I did for my art class because we had to work at different pieces of the box so that in the end we can place them all together to make a whole. I figure that whoever created those costumes experience the same thing.

In the process of creating my box I was able to learn how to use the scanner and software from Windows to enlarge my color scale. Also, I learn to use a blade to cut paper so that I would not had to use scissors and the proper techniques to use cement glue. All which were things that help me in creating my box and making look uniform to give it a 3-D appearance.

This week I was very impress by a sculpture that Skyla Powers constructed. She build a sculpture of a cheetah and a sting-fly combine to solve the issue of pollution within urban environments and the expense of public transportation. Her animal’s super powers are to be able to collected and trash our sources of pollution whether be in the air, water, or floor to use it as fuel to make her animal fly and transport people where the need to go. People can ride this animal for free all they have to do us get on its back. She build her animal out of recyclable material such as cardboard, paper, plastic, aluminum paper, which makes her issue stand out a lot since its job is to take any sources of pollution and converted to energy. Overall I really like her sculpture because is free, fast, and Eco-friendly.

This past week I have been working on the creation of a mixture of two animals mix together to solve the issue of educational inequality. I wanted to focus on education inequality because of my educational background. I attended a high school that receives low funding from the state and federal government. As a result, my school had to seek funding from outside investors such as professionals, non-profits, and alumni. Despite my school’s efforts to raise funds, we still lacked the access to a gym, a library, and new books. However, the board of directors made it their duty to provide us with the best quality education with the resources available. They made sure that every faculty and staff member was on board in providing us with quality education, helping us develop leadership skills and inspiring us to attend college. Since I was inspired to attend college and given the resources to do so, I know that my school provided me with a good quality education.

After witnessing the struggles that my school faced to receive funding from the state government, I wondered about the factors that influence school funding. In my research, I read in the Global Post, that the state gives funding based on how students perform on standardized test. I discovered that schools with low funding usually have students that lack the inspiration to pursue higher education or/and become a professional. Also, there tends to be a range of instructor approaches. Some instructors appear to have no passion for their service, therefore they bring no inspiration to their students. Many schools do not focus on preparing their students for a college education. As a result, students tend to score low on standardized test and most of them do not attend college.(In equality in The Teaching and Schooling: Supporting High-Quality Teaching and Leadership in Low-Income Schools by Linda Darling-Hammond and Laura Post)

Therefore, I decided to create a creature that helps solve educational inequality by combining a phoenix and a dog. I chose a dog because having pets in the class room such as dogs can enhance the skills development of kids learning (Talking About Animals: The Benefit for a Classroom and for the 21st Century Society). I chose the phoenix because that was my high school’s mascot. I named my animal Fields after my hero and high school principal, Ms. Denice Fields, who helped and encouraged me to pursue a higher education. My creature Fields has the power to smell what ever asset that a school or student lacks to obtain a good quality education. Fields analyzes the smell to generate the needed resources . Also, it has the ability to create a mentor to guide, to inspire, and to help students pursue a higher education. She is able to create the mentor by flapping her wings on water.

I created Fields by giving her the body and nose of a dog and the wings and neck of a phoenix. I used pencils to create her legs because I wanted her to stand on something that students use everyday. When many people think of this issue, they automatically think the problem is just the funding. However, there is so much more such as: the lack of resources, student empowerment, and administration issues. To show this idea within the body of Fields, I used a plastic bottle, in which I glued books made out of paper to the inside and pieces of a dollar bill to the outside. The books inside represent the resources that Fields generates once it knows what resources are needed. The pieces of the bill on the outside represent the belief that the only solution to a good education is having more money.

The creation of her wings took more time because of the details. Since she uses her wings to create a mentor for students to pursue a higher education, I decided to make her wings out of post-its and write an inspirational quote or word on each post-it. For her nose, I used a pencil sharpener to represent something that students use everyday. This is similar to how I used pencils to create her legs.

Fields makes a noise similar to that of a large bird which is woo,woo, woo. She tends to live in the city where education inequality is more visible. She has the determination and inspiration to help students pursue a higher education and a welcoming presents that attracts those in need of help to her. She is one of 100,000 of her kind and each of her species can help up to 1,000 students at a time. Fields is not like any other creature. She does not need food or water to live and like the phoenix, she does not die just because there is not reason for her too. She burst into flames every 500 years and then rises from her ashes to address new issues in education inequality.

In the end, I had lots of fun creating her even though at times I struggle to think of things to do or take away. This has been one of the most interesting and fun projects I have had for this class. I hope to take this idea of educational inequality for my future projects. Also, I hope that my creation can increase knowledge on this issue and for those who have receive a good education or had all the resources to receive one to appreciated it. Thanks